While the desire to communicate with the dead
has been around since ancient times (the Greek scholar Eucalyptus
frequently had conversations with his long dead brother. His
brother was still in the room at the time and not getting any
fresher, so the authorities finally had to step in), most scholars
believe that the modern Spiritualism Movement began with the
Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York. In 1848 the girls claimed
to hear "strange, rapping sounds" in the night. Since
rap music wouldn't be invented for many decades, they soon attracted
a wide following. The clairvoyant Andrew Jackson Davis took it
a step further. While in a trance he foresaw the coming of the
spiritualist movement, which is rather like your contractor foreseeing
that you're going to be paying for his new boat. Even the citizens
of Hydesville wouldn't fall for that one. Although the Fox sisters
later confessed to fraud, the Spiritualism Movement swept the
nation. There were so many psychics, mediums and clairvoyants
around that in order to get noticed, you needed a really good
hook.

The era saw the appearance of such personalities
as The Flamenco Dancing Prophet, The Spoon Playing Seer, The
All-Seeing Albino, Tourette's Syndrome Tommy, Count "Count
the Spoons" Orlov, Hornblowing Horatio, The Finder of Lost
Luggage, The Cat Slammer and Hersey Waddell, known as "The
Nostradamus of the Tri-Cities Area". In 1929 he made the
shocking prediction that "A major Wall Street figure will
get a splinter, and it will become infected". Many later
felt that this foretold devastating Wall Street Crash, but it
was discovered that he meant it literally. In October of that
year J. Waldo Bismark, head of the prestigious brokerage house
of Bismark, Waldorf, Ringworm and Sheepshank, did indeed get
a splinter, and a painful one at that.

Some of the most famous psychics of the time
included:

Hercules Biggerstaff, the world's strongest
tarot card reader. Biggerstaff was able to bench press any client
while reading their fate in the cards. Often he would bend iron
bars to impress clients who were unhappy with their fortunes
or just reluctant to pay.

Madam Domino, who promised to read your future
in thirty minutes or less, or your reading was free. Often, to
build suspense, she would wait twenty eight or twenty nine minutes
and then blurt out the client's fortune. Most customers soon
realized that it was a gimmick, but they got free breadsticks,
so few complained.

Maurice La Merde, the Penalty Box Prophet,
took advantage of the superstition of hockey players in the early
days of the NHL. La Merde would walk through the locker room
and "read the aura" of the players, predicting who
would get penalties and who wouldn't. He gained fame in 1933
with his uncannily accurate prediction that Montreal Canadiens
star Aurel Joliat would get "two minutes for tripping"
in the second period of a bout between the Canadiens and the
arch-rival Maple Leafs. His reputation suffered somewhat when
he failed to predict the rash of penalties that led to a 10-0
drubbing by the Boston Bruins, but came back when he predicted
the famous penalty shot by Teeder Kennedy on Bill Durnan (the
actual prediction was "a man in blue shall be wronged, and
wreak his vengeance on a man in red", which, since it was
a Toronto-Montreal game seemed like a pretty safe bet, but it
was a simpler time and people were more trusting). His downfall
came abruptly in 1943 when he was caught "reading the aura"
of the stickboy in men's room. Plus, he confessed that he was
making predictions for the sole reason of "seeing games
for free".

The Fortune Cookie Reader would go with his
clients to Chinese restaurants and read their fortune cookies
for them. Why anyone would pay for that is still a mystery.

The Wildly Inaccurate Millicent who prided
herself that her predictions were never right. Being the jazz
age, when pleasure reigned and the public craved the novel and
the absurd, people flocked to her door to hear such predictions
as "You will soon be elected President of Luxembourg",
(even though every schoolboy knew that Luxembourg was a constitutional
monarchy), or "I see eating seven hams in your future",
even though the the client, Rabbi Chaim Braunstein, was well
known to keep kosher. When the stock market crashed people no
longer had time for such frivolity and Millicent faded from the
scene. Her fifteen minutes of fame had expired, but ironically,
her last public prediction that "Someday a man named Andy
Warhol will coin the phrase 'in the future everyone will be famous
for fifteen minutes'" turned out to be uncannily accurate.

The Screaming Prophet of Doom, who was not
just inaccurate, but really annoying
.